Lately I've been addicted to listening to drama CDs and seiyuu radio (ie. radio talk shows hosted by seiyuus).

Just letting others know, and also as a reminder for myself, tomorrow morning (5/5) at 1am (Jpn time) Mamo's Radio show Round #31 will air and the show will star guest Terashima Takuma in this round. No doubt the topic of UtaPri will come up. You can watch this program here.

Because I'm too lazy to write separate posts for each anime, I'll just briefly jot down my thoughts and feelings with regards to the anime that I watched last night and this morning.

Ep 5 of Maou-sama

Firstly, Karneval ep 5. Finally the story heats up, we get to see Yogi in full action with his awesome vine-whip-swords. He kinda gets his ass kicked by the bad guy though because he's too nice and doesn't want to kill the baddie in their fight 'cause the baddie is an important person to Gareki. We learn that although Gareki acts all tough and mighty, in truth he is really useless... he doesn't have any special weapons or powers to fight against the monsters he hates, and Yogi subtly teases Gareki about his lack of power by telling him to run away with Nai. In the anime more stress is put on the fact that the main goal is to defeat the Vulgra (sp?) monsters, at least in Gareki's viewpoint, and that in Nai's viewpoint is to find Karoku; I found that this clear ultimate goal was missing in the manga.

Secondly, Devil Survivor 2 ep 5. I'm glad that Ureu got more air time this week, and we saw some interaction of Ureu and Houtsuin when they were still children, and learnt that Houtsuin was a rich snob when he was a child. A big revelation that Houtsuin is the real bad guy of the story. He wants to create a world where the most powerful and intelligent person (aka himself) will be the ultimate ruler of the world, and so he has a cold personality where he is happy to eliminate anyone who is "worthless" and powerless. The battle BGM is really intense. What bugged me in this episode is that they never explained how certain characters (aka Hibiki) obtained yet another super duper powerful monster. Also, I expected Jungo's voice to be much deeper... but instead we get the voice of a very timid guy. Another thing I noticed was that the art appears to have "degraded" in this episode... lack of funds and time?? This kind of thing frequently happens in animes though.

This dude is called Jungo

Drop of art quality

Thirdly, Yahari Seishun ep 5.I hate rom coms.I don't even know why I'm watching this show. It's not great in my opinion, it's not exactly mind blowing, perhaps I'm only watching it because Eguchi is voicing the main male lead. However, it does leave some space for you to think about what the meaning of your life is, why humans desire to create social bonds, or in some cases why we choose to sever certain friendships, what exactly does it mean to be a family, what kind of sacrifices do we make for the sake of family? Anyhow, we get a new ED song and sequence, and the highlight of episode 5:

Fourthly, Valvrave ep 4. There's so many twists and turns in the storyline. I don't know who's meant to be the good guy or bad guy any more.